Tidbit

Date with Gillian

Sean and I had such fun on Mardi Gras at the fais do-do that we decided to make the monthly Cajun dance part of our routine. We weren't sure how we wanted to manage it this time...initially we thought just one of us and Gillian...then just both of us. Then I suggested maybe leaving Addie home to go to bed and bringing Gillian. At the last minute we got a sitter and decided to do just that.

We hyped it up. Gillian getting us all to herself-getting to stay up late. She was so excited. We fed Addie and got her in the bath, Angie arrived and we snuck out the back. Angie is with Addie four days a week now (from 730-930 in the mornings and all day Friday), so it's not traumatic when she's the sitter, and it is liberating to know she knows how to put Addie to bed (as far as the routine goes).

Gillian wore a ridiculous 1st communion dress/"Princess gown" Monica from the Cajun Dance Association had found for her in a thrift store for $1 last summer, and decided she wanted her hair in a bun. Before that we had done our nails and I had curled my hair for the occasion (with the curlers that I have had for years and that Gillian used before me-this was my first time!). We went out to Chili's because it was easy and because we all wanted burgers and fries (their blackbean burger is YUM!). We had to wait awhile, but the entire time, Gillian was absolutely delightful. We got seated and they now have these little games at the table and we all had fun playing them together. We talked and joked and laughed. No one was fighting, no one was arguing, no one was trying to escape their seat, NO ONE WAS WHINING. Oh, it was like an oasis of calm and peace, but WITH our children. Heavenly. And we were truly enjoying every second of our date with our little girl, who it seems, is quite civilized and awesome when she's not vying for attention around her sister. I wondered "would she be like this most of the time if she had been our only child?" Obviously, at the end of the day, I think they will love having eachother, but the difference was something to see.

We headed over to the dance and Gillian recognized Monica and they danced pretty early on. Gillian was so sweet in her little dress and her bun. She and I danced, she and Sean danced, she danced as elegantly as she could muster around Sean and I when we danced. I promise that night and watching her at the dance will be emblazoned on my brain forever, as a symbol of THIS MOMENT in her life. When I have the priviledge of being there for her first dance at her wedding, I will remember her last Saturday night in her four-year-old glory-dancing and twirling, and laughing. Even now, I get a little teary thinking about my beautiful little girl being such a beautiful little girl-there was not a single person who didn't smile watching her in her innocence and freedom. I bet lots of them were parents of a not-so-little girl, remembering a special moment, a memory, that they made a mental note to lock in their repository for posterity. I had a wonderful weekend with my girls.

Update on sleep

Since making our decision about sleep training, and choosing to not go to Addie when she yells for us at night, we have had 4 nights where she has woken up (for literally 5 minutes or less) once between 2-5am. Two of those were the non-serious-fake crying "Mama...Mama...OUT...BOTTLE!...OUT!" and one was real crying. Two nights I didn't wake up at all, and I assume she didn't either. All four nights she has slept until almost 8 am, a full hour and a half longer than she does when we were giving her a bottle in the middle of the night. We should have done this a long time ago.

Sleepless in Chicago

Adelaide is a hard baby. I have tried to justify her behavior with illness or teething, but she is just tough. She has always been tough. She has never slept well, which means we have been pretty well sleep deprived for going on two years. The night waking and misery is what prompted us to swaddle her and put her on her stomach at 3 weeks old (Yes, agreed-Oh, the HORROR!). At least then she (and we) could get up to 3 hours of sleep at a time (I was laying next to her until she was 4 months old, and could side-lay nurse her).

She has always been a very orally fixated child, which is why in desperation we turned to the pacifier (Gillian never cared for them). Otherwise, we are forever fishing things out of her mouth that have somehow miraculously NOT choked her to death up to this point (knock on wood). And I mean everything-balls of cat hair; buttons; dimes; sand, cigarette butts and glass at the beach; mulch; trash; bottle caps; tiny polly pocket clothing; shells; guitar picks-you name it and she wants to eat it. Everything except food, anyway. She is a terrible eater, which is why she drinks 30 ounces of milk between bedtime and morning. Or maybe we created that pattern by giving her milk all night.

Oh, the endless chicken or egg second guessing... I am convinced that the pacifier at least contributed to this because when she was little and it fell out of her mouth she would wake up looking for it. And then we swooped in like superheros with a warm cozy boobie or bottle when she cried because it made her go back to sleep like magic. Well, you never know exactly when is the time to start making them tough it out and not go to them when they cry out for you at night. So, we just never stopped, and we still get up and give Addie bottles twice during the night. Except now she doesn't want to go back to sleep. We simply can't deal with it anymore, so we are going to start over beginning tonight.

We are thinking we have to night train her, so I am not looking forward to the next few nights. Tonight it started with cutting the agonizingly long bedtime routine of bottle and books and snuggling from 45 minutes to 20 (she demands books for days, then you turn off the light, and she knows that means it's almost bedtime, and she ALWAYS then asks for more milk, even if she doesn't want it, in an effort to delay the inevitable bedtime, then she writhes and struggles when you walk her over to put her in her crib). So, I ignored the pleas for more milk and more books and snuggling, gave her a squirming, whiny little self a kiss and put her in her bed with a sippy cup of water for the night. She was not happy, but she only cried for a minute or two (so, score for us-tonight anyway). We are going to have to accept that when she wakes up yelling for us it probably will escalate to screaming and crying and disturb everyone in this house and possibly the neighbors downstairs. Hopefully this will only happen for a few nights. The next thing to slough off is the pacifier, but we'll do this dependence intervention thing in stages...

Addie likes to channel Sir Edmund Hillary on a regular day, tempting fate by scaling everything, all the time. She stands up on the back of the couch, she tries climbing onto the fireplace mantle by pulling the piano bench over, she climbs from the floor to the kitchen table top and today I turned around she was standing on the windowsill, precariously. Thank God our windows open from the top, or she would most certainly do a free fall through the screen to an unfortunate end this summer when the window gives against her weight. She falls a lot and there is much kissing of booboos.

I am going to have her checked for allergies when she's two also. It is amazing how much of her life she has spent congested, snotty, and generally uncomfortable (though inexplicably cheerful through a good bit of it). This physical discomfort has led to a great deal of attachment to me and neediness. That is not such a problem with one child, but with two that are needy, things get challenging. Like, today, I couldn't put her down. She would cry and cry and cry-while Gillian was persistently demanding I play princesses with her (so we did that with a "giant monster baby" who lived on my lap-see? Isn't Gillian a resourceful, pragmatic girl?). And it would be one thing if that was unusual, but it's not.

I could go on-about the angry faces she makes or how she yells in protest when she doesn't get her way, or the tantrums. Gillian was an absolute cake-walk in comparison (a scary thought, to be sure, given how strong-willed and head strong she is). At 2o months, Gillian slept from 7 pm to 8 am-13 solid, glorious hours. She didn't climb on things. She didn't put things in her mouth. She was generally very sweet in her disposition and did not throw many tantrums. She didn't really eat well (probably the tonsils/adenoids), but other than that she was pretty easy.

I guess all of this makes it hard to truly treasure our time and I feel pretty awful about it-but sick, belligerent, sleep deprived babies are not inherently lovable (though she has her frequent moments that have me falling in love with her *that* much more). At this age, I wished I could stretch my days with Gillian for eternities, and I am hoping when the warm weather arrives Addie and I also have awesome and special moments on our walks and trips to the beach and playgrounds. I hate feeling less connected with Addie, and I don't know if it's because she and I don't have much time to bond alone, or if its part of the physical stuff I am mentioning, or just the second kid syndrome. She is definitely way more independent, so that contributes... and I am grateful for the independence, but maybe her not needing me as much on a play level (though she is certainly needy on the *sick-and-want-mama* level) makes me feel less bonded.

That is not to say that Addie is not sweet, or silly, or precious at all. She is absolutely hilarious, and is always making us laugh. She is very sweet (albeit sometimes she is compensating for hurting someone), and is generous with kisses and hugs. She's a gifted conversationalist and does the cutest little head dance when she likes a song (she can definitely groove and shake what her mama gave her with the best of them, too). Part of all these feelings might be the cabin fever of late winter setting in or how extendedly dreary and cold it has been-hard for a Florida girl.

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Added Thursday (day after this post was written): Addie woke up once hollering for me, and did so for 5 minutes at 2 am and went back to sleep. I am pretty sure it can't be this easy, but I'll be greedy and hope it is!

Bye Bye Boobies

Addie is done. We made it to 20 months, which I am proud of even though I wanted to go longer. It is tough trying to keep that going when you're away from home 48 hours a week. So, it's over. If this is the last baby I ever nurse, it makes me incredibly sad. I cherish those moments of the most intimate bonding I can imagine.

Classroom

I took last Friday off to do a craft with Gillian's class. I was a little intimidated by the idea of 22 gregarious 3, 4, and 5 year olds since I have never taught a group like that, per se. In my usual fashion, I bought everything I needed on Wednesday, and did nothing to prepare until Thursday night, when I could stay up late because I wasn't working the next day. I had googled "mouse paper bag puppet" because I had this idea about reading Gillian's class If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and having a theme for art and snack around that. Unfortunately, the mouse puppets I found online left a lot to be desired, so I created my own template-borrowing a little, of course. It had to be cute, it had to have few enough pieces that even the littlest kids could manage the project, it had to be economical for me (<$10 for everything), and it had to be functional. Typical, but this took a much longer time to cut out all the little pieces than I expected. I started prepping at 9:30 pm, and finished at 3 am. The nice thing about the bag hand puppets is that all the little pieces tuck nicely into the bag.

I slept 3.5 hours, and then I got up, got the girls fed and ready for school, took Gillian to school, and came back and baked 4 dozen cookies (for snack time-you know give a MOUSE a COOKIE). Gillian was not aware that I was coming back to her class. I arrived a little before 9:30 am (the scheduled arrival time) and the kids were doing circle time and acting out various animals. It was adorable. I have never had a chance to witness a regular day at her classroom, so this was a bonus. They all went to the bathroom, during which time her teacher and I knocked over all the chairs in the classroom (which was attributed to a naughty little leprechaun-they obviously had a lot of fun with leprechauns the day before, which was St. Patrick's Day). The kids came back in marvelling at the destruction the leprechaun had left behind and put all their chairs back where they went. Then it was story time.

I sat down, all these precious little faces eager to absorb every word of the story (except Sebastian, Gillian's arch nemesis, who apparently never listens to anything, ever, and gets sent home on a regular basis for doing things like calling his teacher a "big, fat LIAR!"). And we read the story...I asked them the sorts of questions I ask Gillian during a story ("why do you think he did that?" or "what color is that crayon", or "why do you think the mouse had all that energy to mop the whole house?"), so it wasn't unnatural or anything. I have a four year old. I get that age. And I got to be with them on their best behavior because everyone behaves better at school than at home. It was so much fun to read the story, but then it was craft time.

Everyone took their seats, and I passed out the little brown bags to everyone and told them to dump the contents out. Ms. Woods (one of G's teachers) pinned a mouse to the wall as an example, we passed out the glue sticks, and I walked them through the steps of gluing on different parts. I told them they could make the mouse however they wanted (they could make the eyes be crossed or one up and one down for silliness, or put the whiskers on their bellies, or whatever)...and the teachers and I helped kids who were having a little trouble. The oldest kids finished quickly, following the example, not waiting for my prompts. The little ones brought up the rear, but everyone had a blast and loved the product. I took the picture, below, because they were so excited and it was such fun!

Then it was cookie time, which was even more exciting. They approved of the chocolate chip cookies heartily, and then after that was "free play". Gillian was asking if I could stay longer, so I stayed through free play and had lots of fun playing Swan Princess with Gillian and a few of her classmates (God love Daniel, who was dressed to the nines in a tutu and had a magic wand), when Gillian was singing Swan Lake at the top of her lungs, and then we colored and played tea party... then Ms. Woods asked if I wanted to do regular story time before lunch, so I read another book. Even though Gillian pleaded for me to stay and eat lunch with her, I decided to leave because I was starving and exhausted.

This experience made me even more appreciative of teachers, and what they do every day to give our kids a sense of normalcy and routine. That is probably the only place some kids get that, though maybe less children have family issues in a private school. But still. I honestly had a wonderful time and thought that teaching would be so rewarding and hard. Just like parenting. So, props to all you educators. I honor you and am in awe of you. Thank you, really, for everything you do. I can't wait to come back and do it again (I was told I have an open invitation!).

Timing

Gillian was born mid-September. In Ilinois, the cut off for school is September 1st. That is why she didn't go to preschool until she was almost 4 (preschool starts at age 3); the child has to be that age by the 1st of September. So, when she is eligible for kindergarten, she will be nearly 6 years old. This worries me in a socially focused preschool where my kid loves academics.

{{I will preface the following paragraph with the acknowledgement that my child is no prodigy or genius of any kind, and that most of the kids in the circles we run in have an equal level of motivation in learning The Basics; this is purely about how we struggle with her starting school a full year late, how we struggle to back off and pipe down and let teachers get on with educating our children, and relinquishing control of who will shape the way she approaches school learning...}}

I have tried not to push academics with Gillian too much, but she got the LeapFrog letter and word factory movies when she was 2 as gifts, loved them, and absorbed them like a sponge. She wanted to write letters and learn the sounds of the letters, so she learned them. Now, I assume by osmosis (because last summer when I saw her writing numbers they were all kind of weird), she is writing her numbers perfectly up to 20-this I saw for the first time last weekend (I never saw her practice, so that was unexpected). She learned to count to 100 by listening to me count while I tickle her back before bed (this was only so she would know what the end was so I didn't get stuck doing it for days, but she was listening a lot harder than we thought!). So, she is handy with drawing and with writing, probably because she likes getting positive feedback about her drawings and writing (and she is an extroverted attention glutton, so she likes to do things to impress people, especially Mama and Papa).

The reason I am telling you this is because I have real concerns about how she is going to behave with another 16 months between her and kindergarten where she will learn to write her letters, spell her name, and count (all of which she knew before starting preschool last summer). I would love to hear your stories if you have older children who were in this position at Gillian's age-what wisdom can you impart with educational prep? Gillian is no cakewalk on a regular day, and is exceedingly difficult when bored. So, if she already knows the basics of kindergarten, I hope the curriculum can meet her needs.

This came up because I had a parent-teacher conference last week. THAT is weird. (that I'm a parent and have parent-teacher conferences). Anyway, I asked them what they do to keep children engaged. I assume these days, like Gillian, more and more kids are coming to preschool knowing colors, shapes, letters, numbers, how to spell some words, like their names and those of their family members (technology, preschool-TV, family structure, mutually exclusive gender roles in parenting becoming less important while spending more quality time with kids becomes more important, etc., certainly has a hand in why this is so)....so how does a teacher keep the kids learning? How do they keep the kids from being annoying, distracting pains in the butt when they are trying to teach kids whose ages range from just-turned-3 to almost 6 in one preschool classroom? Right now, Gillian is learning really important things like days of the week and months of the year (and being a "little Mama" to the littlest kids in her class). Her teacher said they pace the kids with what they teach them their first and second year of preschool. She said that they have to be careful not to push too much, because preschool is really more about learning to share, to be responsible, to play well, to make friends, etc. She and the other assistant teacher said they do try to work with individual kids on things to challenge them. All I could think was "these women are ROCKSTARS!". Teachers are seriously underworshipped in this country. They mold these impressionable little brains. It's an awesome responsibility!

I believe Gillian is socially immature and needs to be in preschool. She has grown unbelieveably in the past 10 months of being at NCA (first for camp, then for preschool). She use to be so shy that she would refuse to approach other children at the playground (only wanted to play with adults-mostly ME), and now she makes friends everywhere-even when we're sitting at McDonald's. I will definitely avoid making Gillian some science experiment where learning becomes stressful-my dad made me his experiment while in school for education, and I spent my entire academic life desperate to please him. I also have a very warped need of striving for academic perfection, which makes school stressful at times. I don't want Gillian to be a slacker, but I also don't want her to be a 9th grader feeling the pressure of college (like a work colleague's daughter who is at a college prep high school in the city that seems likely to give herself ulcers over maintaining her 4.0).

When we filled out our school paperwork for 2011-2012, we considered trying to see if Gillian could start kindergarten a year early quite a bit, but everyone (particularly Nonni, the elementary school teacher who retired after 30 years in the classroom) told us we would be sorry in the long run if we put her in the position of being the youngest kid in the classroom. So, we will see how she does in this classroom another year.

Addie Addie RAH-RAH!!!!

Say "when"....

I have taken for granted all along that we would have a third child. "Maybe even a fourth!", I would exclaim in moments of wild optimism. I have a little problem with allowing the reality of any situation to rain on my plans, even if my plans, obvious to everyone but me, would strain me to a breaking point. But A and I were talking last night about how three (she also has two) would affect the financial outlook of our families and it got my mind going. I processed well into the hours when I should have been sleeping (hence the very little sleep I got last night). I decided that I AM GOING TO BE OK WITH TWO CHILDREN if that's what is best for us in the long run.

Wow. I typed it, so it must be true. It is really REALLY hard for me to accept that. Because I had just always thought we would have more.

If we were independently wealthy, or if I was a stay at home mom this would not enter my mind. If we lived in the same city as family, having backup would make the decision easier. But...there aren't federal jobs in my field where our family is.

Sooo, let me explain why the money matters...

When Gillian was a baby, we paid about a couple hundred dollars a week for her nanny to come three days/wk. That was a lot, but not bad at all when you consider what a lot of people pay for daycare. It was that cheap because we split the costs with another family (nannyshare) for two of the days to 1) make it more affordable and 2) to give Gillian some socialization. When Addie came along, we added Fridays with a Loyola student so Sean could have a 5 day work week, since everything he was producing at work was selling. That bumped the weekly output to about an extra hundred a week still nannysharing (2 kids, 4 days a week-this is VERY inexpensive if you are out of touch with what current childcare costs are). When Gillian started preschool, Addie still needed a nanny (that we still share), and we added 2 hours a day 4 days a week so Sean can have help in the mornings when he's getting G ready for school. So, now we pay out about the same each week for Addie because we are sharing every hour of care we use PLUS over $600 a month for Gillian's school. That adds up to about a couple thousand a month to have childcare for Addie and school for Gillian. That's a pretty nice chunk of our monthly income. It's more than our payment on our mortgage.

So, I was talking to A, I started thinking through what it would cost us to have that third child taken care of while paying for our girls to go to preschool and school. And I had never considered what that would mean before.

Well, here's what it would look like: $28,000 a year for one in K-8, one in preschool, and one at home with a nanny. OUCH.

That reality, and my desire to rationalize my decision that two is plenty given the finances, made me start to think of what other pros I could consider to make myself ok with two kids. Well, there's the fact that every family discount to everything on earth is made for families of four. There's the fact that we wouldn't have to buy a bigger car. We wouldn't have to worry about living in a 3 bedroom condo because the girls could both have their own room. I could actually stop hoarding my annual leave to supplement my short paid maternity leave and start going on a couple nice vacations every year and not sweat taking long weekends every now and then. I could, within less than 1.5 years, start working a reasonable schedule 8 hour schedule five days a week that could get me home in time to pick the girls up from school with a brief (cheap) 1-hour stint in aftercare. This schedule would allow me to go to the gym regularly since I would not have to leave my house at 5 am as well. I could also truly have the option of retirement at 45 if we weren't pressed to provide for yet another child ("retirement" being from government service. I have big plans for becoming a nurse practitioner, as you may recall, so it would be a career change, not a retirement per se).

Then, there is the emotional and developmental benefits. With two, Sean and I more effectively manage bedtime, sickness, meltdowns, discipline, and homework. We could give more attention to each child. We wouldn't be run as ragged. We would have more quality time if we weren't constantly intervening with behavior issues between siblings if there are fewer siblings. We could afford for the girls to do more things they (and we) want to do (dance classes, music lessons, etc.). We would never have to buy a new wardobe and gender-appropriate toys for the inevitable son who would come along. We would have more breathing room and more attention to our relationship, and there just isn't much of that right now. It literally makes me tear up when I think of the attention Addie wouldn't get with a third child. And, more importantly, the more independent they get, the more of my own life I could get back. You know, doing things for myself... weekend trips for fun, lessons-music, art, dance.... that kind of thing.

There is the option of having another child when Addie is in kindergarten too, so then we would be financially about where we are now, but that might not look so good by then. I'm not sure if we could go back to the sleep deprivation and exhaustion of another baby once we have kids out of diapers and in school. Addie still wakes up 1 or 2 times a night (at 20 months). I think I might be unwilling to deal with another poor sleeper when I have two other children to cultivate, love, and care for. I'm not closing the door forever, but I think it would give us pause...

So. Yeah. I think once again, I am realizing limits. For now, I guess we'll get on with the business of trying to do the best we can with the children we are blessed to already have.

Is it over yet?

I have just about had enough. Seriously-we must have set a world record for the number of back to back bacterial infections (oh, how many ear infections can we count?), viral illnesses, and just good old fashioned sick this year. Gillian and Addie somehow decided on cultivating the perfect petri-dish-host-environment, disease swapping nastiness, and although Sean and I have generally been above the fray, we have pretty much dealt with at least one sick kid constantly since October. The most perplexing thing I can't wrap my head around is "what's with all the GI bugs this year?"!! I mean, we did had a pretty nasty bout of it in winter of '09-'10, but it was an isolated incident. This year, I have been nauseous (think nausea like week 8 of pregnancy, but not pregnant) more than I haven't been (I guess that's the better-immune-response than vomiting or diarrhea), and the kids have had the fever/vomit/diarrhea GI bug thing at least 4 times. Add snot, coughing, general fever and malaise, and there it is.

Just about everyone I know is echoing my same frustrations with their own families. I literally have cancelled 6 playdates in 3 weeks because of illness and have had other people cancel two on us because they are having the same problems. I don't remember it being like this the past few years. Some of my friends had physical injuries to add a little flavor to the health miseries. Like the friend whose child busted her chin and her head twice (knocking teeth loose, requiring stitches) in a month, or the other one whose little one bit through his lower lip with a fall (also requiring stitches) and had two kids with rectal strep infections. I never even knew that existed. Well, the point is that things could always be worse.

I thought initially that this was because of the extreme cold up here, but friends and family down south are dealing with it too. It's this general foreboding sense that the world seems a bit off right now. Maybe the oil spill, piggy backing on general economic sluggishness, started some great global downward spiritual spiral (sick earth?) manifesting itself in general poor well-being for the sentient. Maybe I am a crazy conspiracy theorist. But I am worrying. And I usually don't worry about the world, as I generally have faith in the way things are. But it seems like it's lapping up to my (and many of my friends') doorstep and I'm very concerned. It's been doom all day long-political insanity and polarization like I have never personally witnessed in my relatively short life (Wisconsin...defunding popular programs...protesting sacred things, like holy books or the funerals of fallen soldiers...regimes falling...political unrest...war); budget crises all over the place (small businesses closing up shop (even on a tiny scale, our food court has two of seven restaurants left), colleagues at state agencies having to take furlough days...states far into the red...talk of government shutdown, federal government freezing raises and hiring at agencies), crazy weather...and crazier unemployment. I'm not an alarmist and I'm not going to issue some blanket forecast of doom, but something is not right (I know, at any given time lots of things aren't right, but this is more than that). And it makes me worry. I probably wouldn't worry as much if I didn't have a family. But I do, so my worries are caricatures of my normal worries.

So, to do my part in an effort to turn this tide, I will try to counteract with oppressive, stifling negativity with greatfulness for my blessings-every single one...trying to make more of an effort to meditate on each every day. Maybe if enough of us do that it will push the darkness back into the vortex where it belongs..to keep it from spilling its sad energy everywhere, keep the darkness out of people's hearts. I have never been great at meditating with all my monkey brain chatter, but this direness demands it. Prayer and Yoga and Kindness. The recipe to counteract disaster. There-a path forward, something I can DO. Care to join me?